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Really. Who can resist what believers are up against? After all, in an increasingly secularized society, we are inundated with the message of materialism. And in that message, secular materialism tells us that all of reality is made only of material — of stuff. It says that there is no spirit, no soul, no final everlasting meaning or purpose to our brief lives.

Moreover, we are told that to believe in God is at best unreasoning foolishness, and at worst, something far more sinister. We are told that religion causes wars, that the Bible is but a myth, and that there is no scientific basis for belief in God.

Faced with that constant drumbeat, who could possibly believe in God? Even the most devout believer must now and again doubt. He must now and again ask, why can’t I see God? Why is there suffering in this world? Why would a just God permit injustice?

Faced with such pervasive secular influence, even the most devout believer must question whether the Red Sea could ever have been miraculously parted, and whether Jesus could really have risen from the dead. Surely, such things cannot happen, can they?

But if one considers all the available physical evidence, and if one follows logic to its final conclusion, then he is left with no reasonable alternative other than to believe that God is real, and that we are fundamentally spiritual beings occupying physical flesh.

If you doubt this, you can easily demonstrate to yourself that you have a distinctly spiritual dimension. You can simply find a quiet place, close your eyes, and perceive yourself. In doing so, you will detect that you are not merely an assemblage of lifeless atoms. You are something more, something that no material explanation can ever satisfy.

If you still doubt, then gaze upon your favorite color, or listen to your favorite musical piece. Material descriptions of these, descriptions of wavelength and amplitude, do not even begin to establish a physical basis for the color or music that you experience. There must be something more to reality than merely the physical.

If you still doubt, then ask yourself whether you act freely of your own volition (free will), or whether everything you think, do and say is beyond your control. Are you a puppet on a cosmic string? Purely material explanations of reality leave no room for free will.

And if you believe that you have no free will, then can you blame anyone for their actions? Can you blame anyone for believing other than you do about free will? Without free will, is anyone truly responsible for what they do? Are we all robots?

Materialism holds that nature has no divine creator, that it simply exists with no plan, no purpose, and no inherent meaning. In that view, nature is a blind force acting upon you with complete indifference.

Yet that same unliving nature has supposedly, somehow, endowed you with life, with consciousness, with a sense of plan, purpose and meaning.

Are you beginning to see that it is much more irrational to disbelieve in God than to believe in Him?

But there is so much more to the story. See for yourself, and then decide.

More than one accomplished scientist has said that nature can be explained without referring to God. What they mean by this is that, according to them, we find no measurable evidence of God. Everything that we see happening can be explained, they say, in terms of other things that we already know. They reject any explanation of natural events that rely on the words, “God did it,” as not leading to scientific progress.
According to many, belief in God has led us to abominations, while science has led us to enlightenment. But has it?
Certainly, science has explained much. But there are also vital questions that science has not answered, and perhaps never can. Some of them are relatively mundane questions, such as, what is dark matter? Such questions carry with them an assumption that while we may not yet know what dark matter is, we are confident that we will find an explanation, and that the explanation will not need to refer to God.
But there are more fundamental questions for which science has no clear answer, not just as of yet, and perhaps never will. What is consciousness? Does anyone have free will, and if so, then what is it? The answers to these questions entail much more than a cursory description of outwardly observed phenomena. They involve our innermost core of experience. Such questions will surely require much more than a few additional measurements of quantifiable data. They will require a paradigm shift, a rethinking of our world view, and perhaps a reexamination of our fundamental scientific assumptions.
No less a scientist than Albert Einstein understood that science was missing some fundamental element, some basic idea, to explain the workings of nature. To be sure, Einstein did not believe in a personal God. But he did seem strongly to believe that reality makes sense, that it is not a cacophony of random events, but a coherent design. He strongly alluded to “the mind of God.” It is very likely, judging from his words, that Einstein believed that, underlying all of reality is a divine, intelligent creator who is forever beyond our ultimate understanding.
There is a great difference between saying that we have no ability to measure God, and saying that, therefore, God does not exist. Some scientists cross that line. It is one thing to say that we cannot progress from details to God, but quite another to say that we should disbelieve in God. Some step over that boundary.
If the question were merely academic, then we could safely ignore it. But the question is far more vital than any academic exercise. It deals with our very survival. That is not an overstatement.
World view is crucial in every aspect of our lives. If we regard each other as mere physical creatures with no spiritual dimension, then in essence, we reduce ourselves and each other to physical objects, to biological phenomena. Many people would dismiss that as inconsequential, especially in the short run. Perhaps it is, in the short run. Atheists can be moral people. But there is strong evidence from history, and from current events, to indicate that such a world view, given time, eventually leads to the utmost barbaric atrocities imaginable.
The concentration camps and gulags of the twentieth century attest to that fact, as do the abortion mills of the twenty-first.
Atheists will point to the Spanish Inquisition and similar atrocities committed by religious institutions during medieval times. But they omit to point out that those institutions were guided not by the moral values taught in their scriptures, but rather, by considerations of political power and economic wealth for the few.
There should be no doubt that natural science has brought enormous benefits to humankind. But without a bedrock moral foundation, it also poses the greatest destructive power ever available by men to unleash against humanity. The very survival of our species is threatened.
Fortunately, we do not need to rely on so-called blind faith to believe in God. Neither must we ignore scientific fact. What we do need, is to ask the right questions in the right way, and to challenge those assumptions that lead inevitably to absurd conclusions, no matter how authoritatively those assumptions are pronounced.
Some of them are dead wrong.

There was a time when people believed that the world was flat, and that the sky was a bowl turned upside down. How much more do we know now, than we did then?

Today, through our telescopes, we can photograph galaxies at the edge of the visible universe. With our super-colliders, we can extract the tiniest known particles from the core of an atom. We have sent men to the moon, and through mathematics alone discovered black hole stars.

When the Greeks first calculated the size of the earth using geometric measurements of sunbeams, they correctly concluded that the circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles. Having achieved this amazing feat, they immediately discarded their results as being too preposterous. The earth could not possibly be that large.

Now we know that it is that large. But how far have we really come?

We congratulate ourselves on having advanced from a table-top world under a bowl, to living in a universe that is a hundred million trillion (100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles in radius. The number of stars has multiplied from the few hundred we see at night, to more than the numbers of grains of sand on the beaches of the world. We can even discover what the stars are made of.

Our reach has expanded more than a million fold. And some scientists have even said that we are on the very verge of knowing everything.

We have progressed from living in a drop of water to occupying an entire lake. But the lake is not all that there is. There are many oceans of reality yet unexplored. And they may be very unlike any lake.

According to some indications, the universe may be not just unimaginably large, but it may actually be infinitely large. And there may be infinite numbers of infinitely large universes. We cannot begin to imagine that.

It has long been a tenet of science that the universe is the same everywhere, at least in the sense that the laws of nature are everywhere the same at all times. But at least one team of astronomers has found clues that there is a region of space which is fundamentally unlike our own region, a place where natural law, as we understand it, no longer applies. (See Dark Flow theory for details.)

Indeed, even in the interior of a black hole star, the rules are drastically changed. And none of the known rules of nature could have generated themselves by any known process.

Even if we were to multiply our knowledge a million times, our science would have grown from the size of a pebble to the size of a boulder — but as nothing compared to the size of Mount Everest, which in turn is as nothing compared to the size of the earth.

It is not that science is futile, nor that we should diminish the quest for truth. But if our quest is to give us progress rather than carry us to destruction, we must maintain our humility.

Science can dissect for us what it is that composes a house, but not music. Science cannot distinguish between a house and a pile of rubble. No natural law makes that distinction. Only in our minds is there a difference.

The universe is not a pile of rubble, but our house. It is not a cacophony, but a symphony. It is not a roll of the dice, but a work of art.

No matter how smart we ever become, we must never lose sight of those fundamental truths, or else, we are lost.
—————–

It would be a great mistake to think that one could use scientific means to prove God to anyone who disbelieves in Him. On the contrary, science is often cited as evidence against God. But that is changing. Increasingly, the evidence is mounting in favor of the assertion that reality is not an accident, but rather, that it is the intentional creation of a living God, a loving God, who remains deeply involved in our lives.

Indeed, one could go so far as to say that, while one cannot use nature to prove God, one must use God to prove nature.

This book is not intended to persuade the atheist. It cannot do that. But it can take away the scientific basis of atheistic arguments, arguments which often cast doubt in the minds of people who do believe in God. The reader will find that a belief in God, far from being contrary to science and reason, is far more in accord with sound thinking, than is the falsehood of atheism.

How can that argument be made?

Since this is not an attempt to prove God, but rather, to prove the reasonableness of belief, as compared to disbelief, then the case must be organized somewhat in the way one pieces together a jigsaw puzzle. The book, then, is organized into three parts. First, we shall identify the pieces of the puzzle, examining each one separately. Second, we shall then show how the pieces fit together into a coherent whole. Third and finally, we shall make conclusions based on the picture that is portrayed by the finished puzzle.

The pieces of the puzzle include a brief history of science, so that we can understand how science began from a theistic (not an atheistic) perspective. Yes, science actually was rooted in religious foundations. But then it made a wrong turn. We shall examine why.

Other pieces concern some of the most recent and amazing discoveries in science, along with some basic and unanswered questions, with which science is only beginning to grapple. These questions concern some exotic topics such as dark matter and dark energy. But they also include the familiar topics of life, consciousness, and free will. Once these individual pieces have been surveyed, then it will be possible to fit them together to see the bigger picture.

The committed atheist will not be persuaded, but neither will his arguments have the power of persuasion they once had.

Asking the right questions

It becomes quickly clear to any serious observer that reality is organized. Smaller things (such as for example atoms) join together to form larger things (such as molecules) and these in turn form even larger things, up to and including planets, stars, galaxies and the universe as a whole. But upon what basis is nature organized?

In order to get the right answer, it is of course important to ask the right question, and to ask it in the right way. Failure to do that can lead to fruitless journeys through dead end alleys.

The question that is often asked, when discussing science and God, is, “Is there a God?” Or, “Does God exist?”

But this question can be asked in a more productive way. A more pointed way of phrasing it is to ask, “What is the organizing principle of nature?” This phrasing of the question makes no assumptions about God that the atheist will reflexively reject. It makes only two assumptions: that reality is organized, and that it is organized around some central core principle. And while some people will reject even those two assumptions, any further discussion is futile when we assume that physical reality has no organizing principle.

It may surprise some people to learn that science is based upon some unprovable assumptions. But it is. In order for science and reason to function effectively, certain assumptions must be made. This kind of necessary assumption is called an axiom. The axioms upon which science relies include these:

Observed reality obeys natural laws. These natural laws apply everywhere and at all times. Natural laws are consistent with each other, with no contradictions between them. And these natural laws can be learned and understood by the human mind.

Those are profound assumptions. They characterize reality as making sense. And they strongly infer that all of reality is founded upon some core, central principle.

Asking the right way

Suppose one were studying the game of baseball (or cricket). There would be many different ways of making this study. But some of them would be more useful than others. One study might focus on the tiny details of the game, such as the stitching on the ball. But could such a study give us a fundamental understanding of the game? It would make much more sense to begin by knowing the rules of the game.

How much sense would it make to study the rules of baseball without assuming that somebody wrote the rules? And if one did not assume that, but focused rather on the stitching, then of what use would that study be?

Understanding nature must of necessity depend on an inquiry into the rules, that is, natural law. But studying natural law logically requires that those laws arise from some source, a source that is able to create them, and to make sense.

The atheist might argue that natural laws might spontaneously arise from nothing, or at least, that natural laws might simply exist with no prior cause, no plan, no purpose. But are those assumptions more reasonable than to suppose instead, that the existence of organization is itself a strong indicator of an organizing principle?

So it is not enough to ask, what is the organizing principle? We must also ask, from what source does this principle arise?

Absolutes, ultimates and turtles

A long time ago, many people thought that the world is flat, like a table top. The question was then asked, what holds up the earth? An answer was proposed, that the earth is held up by a giant turtle. But then, what holds up the turtle? Oh, another turtle. And what holds up that one? Very well, then, it’s turtles all the way down.

According to that world view, there is no final answer, no ultimate, absolute basis of reality. There is only an endless series of questions.

But as it turns out, the world is not flat like a table top, but round like a ball. Suddenly, the question of what holds up the earth makes a lot more sense. The surface of the earth rests upon an inner core. And that inner core has an absolute center.

Moreover, it makes no sense to ask, upon what does the absolute center rest? For unlike the outer surface of the earth, the absolute central core is the finality. It is the resting place itself, and it needs no further resting place. It is in a class by itself, not comparable to the outer layers which rest upon it.

If we were to try to think about God, we would first have to think about an ultimate, absolute core center of all reality. God is incomparable to anything we can imagine.

Science Was Once Religious

There is a story told about Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), who is undoubtedly among the most influential scientists of all time. According to the story,Newtonbuilt a table-size model of the sun and the planets. An atheist visitor admired the model, and askedNewton, who had built it. Newtonreplied that no one had built it. It simply came into being by itself. The visitor scoffed, why do you say such a preposterous thing? WhereuponNewtonreplied, why is it preposterous for me to say that the model came into being by itself, but not preposterous when you claim that the real thing did?

InNewton’s time, science had already begun in earnest to break free from the shackles of the religious institutions that had ruledEuropefor centuries. In medieval times, the so-called Dark Ages, society was dominated by these institutions. They had the power of life and death over ordinary people.

Science, during these times, was looked upon as a quest to learn about God’s creation.

But by the timeNewtonwas born, science was turning away from belief in God. The Dark Ages were over, and an era called The Enlightenment was occurring. It was during these times that scientists began openly defying church authority, and were challenging certain church teachings. Some had already been burned at the stake for doing so.

This schism between science and religion was not abrupt. It was a slow, gradual process. Isaac Newton was not an atheist, and probably most scientists believed that God created the world exactly as described in the words of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. But however gradual the schism, it grew, and it continued to grow even more, over a long period of time.

Perhaps the iconic event that represents the final break between church and science was the publication (in 1859) by Charles Darwin of his book, On the Origin of Species. This is the book that introduced the Theory of Evolution to society. It struck like a dagger at the very heart of Biblical teaching. Origin of Species, perhaps more than anything that preceded it, was a direct contradiction of church teachings regarding Creation. It would lead eventually to a series of ever greater departures from religious teaching, culminating in the scientific assertion that human beings evolved from more basic life forms. This assertion defies the creation story in Genesis, and was therefore heretical in the view of the church.

In 1925, another iconic event occurred, that represents the victory of Evolution Theory over Genesis. This was the Scopes Trial, after which, the final vestige of church authority over science would disappear, and in the public mind, scientific teachings would trump religious teachings.

Of course the story is much more complicated than all that. But the summary of this long process of history is that modern science, during its formative years, came into conflict with established religious institutions. That conflict, including as it did the persecution of scientists, engendered a hostility that persists to this day. And given that science has transformed society from the misery of Dark Ages life into the prosperity of modern technology, religion has become almost thoroughly discredited when it comes to matters of science.

Today, it is not uncommon to hear (or read) scientists who in one way or another reveal a sneering contempt for such things as Creation Science, Intelligent Design Hypothesis, and even a basic belief in God. People who propose these ideas are looked upon as ignorant, whether innocently misguided or even sinister. Believers in God are ridiculed and scorned, and therefore may find it difficult to be accepted into scientific programs or publications. While theologians are not being burned at the stake, the tables seem otherwise to have been turned.

Has Science Supplanted Faith?

It is often said, and widely believed, that science has shown that the Bible is wrong, or at the very least, that Biblical teachings on science are only myths, not physical facts. A familiar example is that the church proclaimed that the sun revolves around the earth. That is clearly wrong. The earth revolves around the sun. So science is right, the Bible is wrong.

But wait. Were the churches’ teachings in accord with the Bible?

Any student of the medieval era recognizes that the churches inEuropehad become powerful political institutions. The people in these institutions were as shrewd and as astute in wielding their power as any pagan or secular tyrant ever had been.

The trappings of power included money, military and science. The churches kept a tight grip on education, and therefore, on how people were allowed to think. So long as the people believed that the church was the instrument of God, few would dare to undermine its power. And those who did defy the church, were punished by horrific torments unless they quickly bowed down and submitted.

It was in this context that science and the church ran afoul of each other. The conflict was not one between faith and reason, but rather, between the established powers that ruled the day, and those who sought truth.

The reason it is important to understand this, is that in modern times, science and political power are once again coming into conflict with each other. If science loses this battle, it will once again become subservient to those who seek not truth, but power.

Later on, we shall take a fresh look at what the Bible actually does say about natural law. We shall find that faith is not the enemy of science, but its ally.

For quite a long time now, the trend in science has been to assert that physical reality can be adequately explained without resort to God. But that is changing. Let us examine why.

Present scientific theory portrays physical reality as being predicated on two principles: cause and effect, and randomness. Both assume that nature is a system of blind, indifferent forces.
But evidence and reason point to a portrayal of physical reality as being predicated on the principles of life, consciousness and free will.
The agency of a Creator explains the facts more thoroughly and logically than does the present state of science. Indeed, the rejection of the Creator explanation is not only hampering scientific progress, but has turned science upon a dangerous dead end.

Chapter 1

Albert Einstein never accepted the idea that there is any such thing as random chance. His rejection of the idea became a matter of great controversy, because randomness is a basic concept of quantum physics. But Einstein was never able to overcome the arguments of those who insisted that pure chance is a physical reality. So, even to this day, it is well accepted in quantum physics that certain events (at the subatomic level) occur for no other reason than pure chance.
Yet Einstein was right, although for the wrong reasons. Here is why.
Einstein’s reasoning relied upon his view that physical reality is deterministic. He seemed to have conceived of the universe as a sort of clockwork mechanism, which once set into motion, proceeds along an inalterable course of events. The future, according to that view, is already carved into stone, so to speak, and cannot be changed.
On the opposing side, quantum physics correctly rejects Einstein’s determinism. But like Einstein, it is right for the wrong reasons. Quantum physics replaces the clockwork with (what Einstein described as) dice rolls. In that view, the universe is portrayed not as an inevitable series of events, but rather, as consisting of random and utterly unpredictable events. The future has not been decided yet, and could go in many different directions that have not yet been set in stone, and will not be, until those events actually occur.
Both Einstein and the quantum physicists got it wrong. Neither determinism nor randomness can explain the world we see. Indeed, both of those worldviews contain fatal flaws in logic. To point to those fatal flaws, we need to look inward. Let’s do that.
More than one witty person has pointed out that physics can explain everything about the universe except the physicist. The universe, these wits say, would be much more neatly explained if there were no one to explain it.
To understand how profound this (seemingly contradictory) statement is, we must put together a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, an assortment of facts, and fit them into a coherent whole.
First, let us consider three facts that are so obvious that we rarely think about them. But their implications are enormous. Here they are.

1) You are alive.
2) You are conscious.
3) You make choices.

1. Science can well explain life in terms of chemistry. But as we shall see, this chemical explanation contains some gaps that have yet to be explained in terms of conventional science. Later, we shall fill in those gaps.
2. Consciousness is a much greater mystery. Indeed, there is no completely adequate physical definition of consciousness. Most definitions are circular, and involve words that are so subjective as to shed no light on the reality of consciousness. For at its heart, consciousness involves an inner experience that cannot be formulated or quantified. While we may know a lot of things about consciousness, physics fails to predict its existence, nor can it explain how consciousness comes about, or what it is. Some have proposed that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that arises once a system becomes sufficiently complex. But what physical principles differentiate a system from a non-system? What in physics defines complexity? For that matter, what exactly is an emergent phenomenon? All of these words depend upon our perceptions of reality, not on the reality itself. For example, each of us can distinguish between a house and a pile of rubble. But in reality, there is no physical property or principle that makes that distinction. Only in our minds does this distinction exist. And the fact that it does indeed exist, and exists there only, is a powerful clue as to the nature of physical reality.
3. While life can be fairly well explained in terms of chemistry, consciousness cannot. Even so, we are all well aware that both life and consciousness are very real. What many people disagree on is whether free will exists or not.
Yet, if one rejects the idea that we have free will, then this rejection leads necessarily to absurd conclusions that cannot be avoided.
Free will is the ability of a person to make choices. More specifically, free will is the property of a conscious, sentient being to decide between one available alternative or another, regardless of prior influences that might otherwise dictate that decision.
Were there no free will, there would be no science. No one would be able to choose what to believe or not to believe, including whether or not to believe in free will. No one would be morally accountable for his actions, not even the people who held him accountable. We would all be puppets on cosmic strings, passive spectators in our own lives, unable to alter the course of our lives, whether that course be decided by predetermined destiny or random chance.
Therefore, to believe that we have no free will leads to useless conclusions, and to an absurd worldview.
But having said all that, many scientists do not believe in free will. Why not?
It is because they believe that free will would violate the principle of cause and effect. It would not, of course. But their concept of cause and effect is very constrained, and they seem unable or unwilling to break out of the box. So then, rather than upset their worldview, they choose (yes, choose) instead to believe in an absurdity.
It is this disbelief in the obvious that is leading science down the destructive road of falsehood. By ignoring, and even rejecting, the notion of free will, science has reached a dead end in its quest to explain physical reality. Unless scientists, and the society at large, opens its figurative eyes, the result will be calamity.

Chapter 2

Science has gone though many stages during history. At each stage, it has gotten better at what it does. Only during times of stubborn resistance to change has science faltered. Fortunately, each time it faltered, the weight of evidence forced a new and younger generation to forge ahead into new territory, not leaving behind their ancestors, but (so to speak) standing upon their shoulders.
So it must be now.
There was a time when science was predicated upon religion. But institutional religion eventually became overly political and superstitious. Misreadings of scripture became ingrained into society, and when scientists attempted to break free of those constraints, they were persecuted by the clergy.
But finally, science broke free, and forged ahead. Many new discoveries were made, and these helped to improve the lives of people who lived in the newly liberated societies.
It is no wonder, then, that the culture of science developed a strong aversion to anything that smacked of theology. Worse, this conditioning occurred when modern science was at its most successful, and in its most formative years. That aversion is now deeply embedded into the institutions of science.
Today, most scientists will tell you that physical reality can be explained without resort to God. Indeed, there is sometimes contempt and hostility to religious explanations of physical reality, and it is sometimes unconcealed. To be sure, scientists will affirm that they will follow the evidence, and would believe in God if only there were evidence for Him. They say that it’s not that they believe there is no God. They just find no evidence to support a belief in God, and that it is more productive to follow a materialist method than a spiritual one.
And so far, their approach seems to have paid off. So then, what could possibly go wrong?
Here is what is going wrong.
When we mention the word, “materialist,” in this context, we are not talking about greed, or hedonism, or any of the negative thoughts often associated with the word, materialism. The meaning here is very different.
The world we see is made out of material, or “stuff.” Trees and rocks, atoms, and stars in the night sky, are some of the materials that comprise nature. But what can explain the existence of all this stuff?
Here is the departure between modern science and religion.
Science has taken on a worldview that says that all stuff can be explained by other stuff. All “stuff” comes from other stuff. Stuff can even come from nothing, so long as you get positive stuff and negative stuff to offset each other, and add up to zero.
To put it another way, science regards the universe as a sort of box. (Even if there is a multi-verse of many universes, the same idea applies; the multi-verse is just a bigger box.) Everything inside the box can be explained by other things inside the box. Nothing (at least nothing of consequence) is outside the box. Indeed, there is no such thing as outside the box.
Therefore, there is no need for a Creator, there is no divine intervention, there are no true miracles, and until we get a specimen, there are no angels or spirits. There is only the box. If you believe otherwise, then prove it.
But there is proof. It is the existence of conscious free will. Free will violates the rules of the box, because free will is neither random nor deterministic. Therefore, free will is not allowed inside the box. Therefore, there cannot be any such thing as free will. If there were free will, then there would be an “outside” of the box. And there isn’t, because we have no proof except free will, which does not exist, because if it did exist it would be proof.
Perhaps that sounds overly sarcastic. But the absurdity of denying that there is free will cannot lead to any sensible response to those who deny it, however well their intentions might be. They are the old guard of science, the men upon whose shoulders a new generation of scientists will stand.

Chapter 3

It is time to replace the old world view with one that more closely fits the observed facts. It is time to think outside the box.
The reality of free will must be accepted, if science is to progress. The proof is overwhelming. Only a rigid adherence to the materialist philosophy holds some scientists back from accepting it.
One step along the path to restoring science to a productive path, is to ask the right questions instead of the old ones.
In the past, the conflict between science and religion has centered around the question, “Is there a God?” It is, of course, a vital question, but it has been asked in the wrong way.
A better way to phrase the question is to ask, “What is the organizing principle of the universe (or of physical reality)?”
When we combine this question with an acceptance of the evidence for free will, we can achieve a dramatically more accurate and useful world view. And among the vital concepts of this view, are the three components that we have already mentioned: life, consciousness and free will. Let’s take a closer look at all three.
1. Life. Conventional science, once it departed from its roots in religion, began to hold to the notion that life is not a fundamental component of the universe. Even if life turns out to be ubiquitous throughout the planets and galaxies, current scientific understanding is that life is more a byproduct of random processes and coincidences, than a basic concept around which the universe is organized. Conventional thinking is that, but for a few accidental properties of the universe, life might not exist at all. In this view, the universe could otherwise be a lifeless expanse of space and matter. (In which case, we would neither have, nor need, scientists to explain it all.)
That materialist view requires that randomness, not intent, lie at the heart of physical reality. Randomness becomes the god, the creator of all that there is.
But the evidence is abundant that the universe is specially and specifically designed for life. If scientists hold that there is no evidence for God, then they should admit that there is even less evidence that reality is at its core, random. Further evidence of this can be found in consciousness.
2. Consciousness. We have already seen that the existence of consciousness poses a very big challenge to physics (and to conscious scientists). But there is more. Consciousness has been shown to be more than just a means of perceiving reality. It intimately interacts with reality. Experiments such as the “double slit,” are familiar to all physics students. The results of this experiment are an amazing confirmation that photons (which comprise light) behave differently when there is a conscious observer than when there is not. Furthermore, there is another well known principle in physics called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that an electron does not have a precise location, unless and until, an observer perceives the electron, at which time it “collapses” from a probability cloud into a point. To be sure, these two physical concepts are being oversimplified here for brevity. But the point remains that consciousness is not just an “emergent property” of physics. It is part and parcel, root and soil.
3. Free will. It has already been mentioned that many scientists reject the notion of free will, based on the incorrect idea that free will violates the rules, specifically, the rules of cause and effect. In physics, everything that happens is forced to happen, because some prior event made it happen. But the concept of free will specifically states that we can choose between two available alternatives in such a way that our choice (of the particular alternative that we select) is not forced by prior events. This seems to be a violation.
But it is not. And ironically, quantum physics already proves that. That is so, because the concept of cause and effect requires us to trace backward from the effect, to the cause. If a baseball is flying through the air, we can assume that something caused it to do so, whether the ball was thrown, hit by a bat, or some other reason.
But in quantum physics, we find that events (at the subatomic level) occur with no other traceable cause than randomness. This is where Einstein objected. How can randomness be a cause? What causes the randomness that caused the particular event (let us say, the decay of a radioactive atom)?
If we can trace no farther back than the “randomness,” then are we not already tracing an event inside the box to a cause that started from outside the box?
And if we can do that for randomness, then why not for free will?

Conclusions

Since both free will and quantum randomness seem to be causative agents in the physical world, and since both of them originate from an untraceable source, then it is reasonable to propose that there is a deeper reality that gives rise to observed reality.
That deeper reality may be referred to by many names, the most familiar being a supernatural reality, or a spiritual dimension.
There is physical evidence that this is the case.
While quantum events seem to be blindly random, they might be neither blind nor random. They might be caused by the agency of divine free will, that is to say, a living, conscious, volitional force.
Humans also exhibit free will. In this regard, we also are living, conscious, volitional forces. In other words, we are created in the image and likeness of the Creator.
If reality is the creation of God, then might we say that He left nothing to chance? Might we say that everything happens according to His divine will?
Who is your god? Is it an uncreated set of blind, indifferent forces? Or is He an uncreated, living, purposeful God?
I’ve made my choice. Do you have free will?

Thousands of years ago, there was a discussion among serious philosophers as to whether or not air exists.

Some said that if air exists, we should be able to see it. And since we cannot see it, then it must not exist.

But then someone pointed to trees swaying in the wind, and asked, what unseen force caused the trees to do that. Other people sensed the cooling breeze on their faces, and asked why they felt such a thing. Yet other people noticed their own breath, and discovered that without air, we must all die.

It became undeniably clear to all reasonable people, that air must indeed exist, even if we cannot see it. For we can see its pervasive effects. There are simply too many things that cannot be explained unless we accept the fact that air, this invisible substance, is real.

But what about proving God? Can we use the same method as we do when proving air? Can we, by scientific reason and logic, prove the existence of God?

Some people might answer that God would not be God if He were so small that we could encircle Him with our paltry human powers of logic.

But, just as was the case with air, in the time of the ancients, what we can prove about God is not that He does exist, but rather, that He must exist.

That kind of proof may not satisfy the scientist or the mathematician, but it does open for all of us a door, a doorway to a reasoning belief that life has a higher purpose than merely being born, making noises, and then dying into eternal oblivion.

A well reasoned belief in God lifts us above the dismal prospect that we are simply atoms and molecules fated to dissolve. It offers us a meaningful insight into who we really are. For we are not mere physical creatures after all. We are of both substance and spirit. And that reality carries profound consequences that do not apply to beings who are merely of the flesh.

For, as beings of spirit, we are both accountable for our actions, and forgivable in our errors. Our deeds have eternal consequence, but we do not walk alone with those deeds through the valley of death. We have a guide and a savior. Our reality is neither dismal. For if we sacrifice in the cause of good, our loss is not in vain, and if we suffer, there is a hidden purpose in our travails.

Faith, if properly placed, is a powerful tool for living life. Its rewards are enormous. Without faith, life is all too brief, and the prospect of death is all too bleak.

———–

All physical phenomena, such as trees swaying in the breeze, are governed by natural law, even if we cannot lay our hands on that law. All the powers of our brains, including logic and conscious awareness, are rooted in abstractions. And even though we cannot see those abstractions themselves, we know that they represent a hidden reality. While the breath we draw into our lungs, to stay alive, is composed only of air for our body, there is also a spiritual reality, and it is the breath of life for our ineffable soul. It is just as real, and just as necessary, as physical air.

God is forever beyond our understanding, beyond our science, and beyond our reason. Yet paradoxically, when we deny that God exists, all our explanations of scientific fact lead inevitably to frustration (as we shall see). All our attempts to construct a just society become futile. And life itself becomes an all too brief season, a moment in the vastness of time, a moment of dreary, dismal fatalism, followed by permanent oblivion.

If we cannot prove that God does indeed exist, yet we can prove that He must exist, just as surely as air must exist.

For if we say that God does not exist, then we are forced to arrive at conclusions that are so absurd that we might as well believe that one equals four, or try to walk through a brick wall that we pretend is not there.

Are there really Ten Thousand Proofs of God? There are endless proofs. One of them is you, yourself. And that one is the most convincing of all.